Stone Dead

by Jennie Melville

  Charmian spoke briefly to both of the witches, suggesting some coffee would be welcome; then they disappered into the back regions, while she turned to Hallows.

  ‘I ought to be preparing a report to be read to a specially convened committee,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Hallows. He groaned inside himself: Daniels never pulls rank, but somehow you always know how busy and important she is.

  Shouldn’t have said that, Charmian thought, I’d forgotten how prickly he could be, but men nearly always are when a woman is promoted over them. And she had been: Hallows had been interested in SRADIC.

  Quickly, she said: ‘No need to be. It’ll get done – this is more important.’

  Briefly, he told her what was discovered under the floorboards.

  ‘How did they come to be looking?’

  ‘Something that was said to them last night by a restaurant owner, Charley Briggs, who knew the house when he was at a local school nearby. He told them there might be something under the floorboards.’

  ‘How would he know?’

  ‘That’s something we have to find out,’ said Hallows grimly. ‘Too much local knowledge around here: the stone tomb and now this.’

  ‘I know Charley Briggs, crossed my path once over a charity fair he was organizing in the Great Park for a colony of white witches and warlocks. I don’t think the Queen was too pleased, although she agreed to it. She didn’t come but I heard the Queen Mother did. He will have to be interviewed, and Birdie and Winifred are due to be questioned again in any case.’ She moved forward. ‘I’d better take a look myself. Give me a hand as I get down there. No, it’s all right, I have a torch.’

  Hallows waited as she slid away. He looked at his own hands: filthy. She would get dirty too.

  He had the horrible sensation that there was any amount of dirt underneath those floorboards. He followed the noise that Birdie and Winifred were making into the kitchen, where he ran his hands under the tap. Boiling hot water, he noted, but no towel or soap. Perhaps witches did not need them.

  Presently, he went back into the shop, where a row of onlookers was peering through the window. Birdie followed him in with a tray.

  ‘Have you got a blind?’ he asked irritably, tearing his gaze away from two staring women.

  Birdie shook her head. ‘ No, nothing like that. Always open to the public, that was going to be our motto. Might have stayed open all night on New Year’s Eve and Walpurgis night.’

  It was always hard to know whether to take Birdie seriously and Hallows was particularly bad at it. Charmian could have told him that Birdie always meant exactly what she said.

  He bent down by the gap in the floor. ‘Are you all right?’ He could hear movement, a kind of scrabbling from further down the hole. She must be almost up against the wall. He had not gone so far himself. Of course, she was smaller, which made it easier.

  Birdie silently profferred her tray; he took a cup, as Charmian slowly, and not ungracefully, emerged head first from under the floor.

  She had dust on her clothes and cobwebs on her hair and face. ‘Did you go right down the end?’

  Hallows shook his head. ‘No.’ He had met the cat at that point in his investigations. Cat and rat, more than enough.

  ‘Right then,’ Charrnian dusted her hands, and accepted the coffee which Birdie offered her.

  ‘First, the clothes: all women’s dresses and skirts and blouses. All worn, but all clean. Or they were when put down there. Not been down there too long. Not years, months maybe. Forensics will know.’

  Hallows found himself pleased that Charmian was speaking in jerky sentences as if she had not enjoyed her trip to the underworld.

  ‘I didn’t like the look of those clothes,’ said Birdie, for once speaking for them all.

  ‘No, they were not put down there for fun or a joke. They were hidden for a purpose. We have to find out what that was.’

  ‘Not been there long, you say?’ observed Winifred, who had appeared with a dish of biscuits which no one touched: there was something about the findings under the floor, taken with the two bodies yesterday, that did away with appetite.

  Charmian agreed. ‘No, not dusty enough. But Forensics may date them … dead insects and that sort of thing.’ She met Hallows’s gaze at this point, and they agreed, she felt sure, on what she was leaving out. ‘One other article there that would interest the scientists, but down the end of the area, right up against the wall, there was something else again. A pile of magazines and photographs. Been there some time, judging by the way they looked.’

  Hallows looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘I couldn’t see very well in the light of the torch … but I’d say they were porn mags.’

  Winifred made a little noise of disgust. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, under our floorboards too.’

  But Birdie put her head on one side and expressed a wish to see them.

  ‘Did you notice anything else?’ Hallows asked Charmian. It had to come out, better get it in the open.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The eye. An eye, possibly human, was placed on top of the pile of bags and clothes.’

  Winifred covered her face with her hands.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Charmian. ‘You are doing exactly what the person who placed the eye there wanted: it was to keep us from looking. A symbol, a warning.’

  She turned to Winifred, who dropped her hands. ‘ It’s not nice, I know, Winifred.’ An understatement, she thought, but it’s the sort of thing you say at moments like this. ‘But because of what is found, we have to close the shop and get this room examined.’ She glanced at the window where faces still stared in. ‘We will have to get screens up.’

  Winifred nodded. ‘What about upstairs? It’s where we live.’

  ‘Have you sold the house? Could you go back there?’

  The two women had lived in a small house close to Charmian’s own home in Maid of Honour Row.

  ‘Almost, we were on the point of exchanging contracts.’

  ‘Could you live there? If so, go back. It will be best.’

  She knew, and perhaps Winifred did too, that the police teams would sweep through the shop here, searching and dismantling all.

  Charmian looked at Hallows. ‘Can you spare someone to help them pack up and then go with them?’

  And keep onlookers and the press from them, was the unspoken message here. The two women probably had little idea of the weight of the publicity, searching and unpleasant, that would fall upon them.

  Witches? Two of them in that house, owning that garden with a stone coffin and the extra body? Of course, it’s them, and if they didn’t do it, then they know who did. That would be the judgement of many.

  They would need protection from themselves as well as for themselves. Charmian knew that behind Birdie’s meekness was an aggressiveness that could burst out. Winifred Eagle was brave and sharp-tongued, which might not be any help to them at all. Quite otherwise, in fact.

  What, those two? Up for anything, might go the neighbourhood verdict.

  Hallows nodded. ‘I’ll see to it.’ He retreated to a corner of the room to converse on his mobile phone. ‘Send WPC Lewis, she can handle it.’ And not all could, he considered. To Birdie and Winifred, he said: ‘ If you two would like to go up to your rooms and collect anything you need to take with you, then you will get a lift round to your house. Don’t worry about what you leave behind, it will be safe.’

  ‘What about the cat?’ asked Birdie, her voice deep and concerned.

  ‘He’ll be all right too. But you can take him with you if you want.’

  ‘I might just do that. I will think about it.’ And Birdie followed Winifred up the stairs.

  Hallows took a deep breath and returned to where Charmian stood and where she had been thinking.

  ‘We’ve got to pull this together,’ she said. ‘Get Deast and Chance here to see the clothes. Get Fletely to check whether Amanda Warren was wearing her own clothes when her body was found.�
�

  Hallows exhaled sharply. ‘ You think she was stripped and then dressed again?’

  ‘In second-hand clothes, yes. And the same could be true of the woman found here. We must get an identification, and have what she is wearing checked. Her own or not? It could be what these clothes were here for. If they have any connection. It is all still up for grabs.’

  She went on: ‘There is something else to take into account: the pornographic stuff down there … It looked old to me. So what does that mean? Questions to be asked there.’

  For the moment she was silent, thinking of the Horseman, who had stabbed horses, who liked killing and might move on to women, and Victoria Janus, who had been accused of killing …

  ‘The Horseman had better be brought in, but not until we know if the wounds on Amanda Warren and the new victim resemble the slashes on the horses. Until we have something positive there, he should be checked but no more.’

  She was being tough and commanding with Hallows, and she knew it, but he was taking it well.

  He nodded, and let her go on.

  ‘Then there is Victoria Janus. I shall question her myself.’ For I would dearly like to believe her the killer, since I am beginning to believe she killed in the past and might do so again. She seems to me to be unnatural and evil.

  ‘And who else is there out there, the one we don’t know about, the killer in the woods?’

  She could see from Hallows’s expression that he was thinking: Steady on there.

  She had just a minute to notice the floorboards, so polished and gleaming, and to think how hard Birdie and Winifred had worked and how they were going to hate having their shop chewed up. There was money as well as hard work on the shelves so carefully lined with books. There was a bowl of red and white flowers in the middle of the big polished table. All signs of the party of last night had been cleaned away. Birdie and Winifred had been busy. The shop was a pleasant sight, and would probably have been a success. Still would be if it got the chance. What the place needed was warmth, the smell of good food and the laughter of friends. Had it ever known them?

  She turned towards Hallows. ‘ Bloody house,’ she said. ‘But it’s never the house, is it, that’s stupid, it’s the people in it and what they do. Who has felt at home in this house?’

  ‘The eye, think about the eye,’ Hallows demanded as she fell silent again. ‘Is it human?’

  ‘Eye of newt and toe of frog … I don’t know, I am not an expert and it is hardly in pristine condition, but I would say it is a human eye.’

  Chapter Five

  ‘This eye business,’ asked Deast aggressively, ‘is it witchcraft stuff?’

  It was a question that a lot of people were going to be asking.

  ‘I mean you’ve got a couple of witches own the shop, added to which it sells witchcraft gear.’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ said Charmian. ‘ Yes, there could be some kind of witchcraft involved. A lot of people are superstitious about eyes. Did you know that Isaac Newton used a spoon handle to feel round the back of his eyeball to see what it did to the vision?’

  ‘Wonder it didn’t blind him,’ grumbled Deast. ‘All right, I get your point: you don’t have to be a witch to take the eye seriously. A scientist can be as loopy.’

  Sergeant Yardley was still lording it in the police van outside the shop where the clothes, protected by the eye, and a bunch of what he called ‘porno mags from the year dot’ had been found earlier in the day. He was probably the only happy man involved in the case at the moment which gave him and Jamey Lily plenty to yarn over in the evening.

  There was a conference in Charmian’s office. Present were Inspector Deast and Inspector Chance. Dolly Barstow was sitting at Charmian’s right. Superintendent Hallows was expected any minute. He was usually late, partly because he was always busy, but also because his wife left him to look after himself while she got on with her life. He loved her but they did not seem to meet as often as he would wish. At that very moment he was running down the path towards the meeting.

  On the table in front of each man was a thin folder of reports and assessments. This included Birdie Peacock’s statement and the questioning of Charley Briggs, former warlock, about exactly what he meant when he told the witches there must be something under the floorboards. He had been cheerful, bland and unhelpful. ‘ Did I say anything? Can’t remember, I always josh them a bit. They enjoy it.’

  There were other interviews, plans, maps and photographs, all put together under the guidance of Superintendent Hallows, who liked to see things on paper. Concrete, something you could talk about and discuss, leading to fruitful activity. He hoped.

  There was also a transcript of a telephone call from Victoria Janus to Charmian which had come through earlier that day and had been recorded in her absence. While she had been looking at the dusty clothes under the floorboards in the shop in Gallows Passage, Victoria Janus had been saying: ‘Hi.’ (the voice jovial with a whip of insolence in it) ‘Long time since we spoke properly. Come over and see my crew. I’ve got a superb Dorothy L. Sayers, a winner. You’ve got my address, saw you pick it up. Give me a ring. Your two-faced friend.’

  The assembled officers were flicking over the pages of the report, Deast was frowning and Chance looked bored. He probably was.

  Charmian saw with foreboding that they were a disparate group almost bound to disagree. They even looked different. Dolly was wearing a plain, neutral-coloured linen suit which looked expensive but could have done with a press. There was Sid Chance, relaxed in jeans and a sweater, but next to him Inspector Deast was wedged into a tight blue suit in which he looked hot and ill at ease. Put on weight, Charmian judged, that’s the new wife’s cooking. Then she condemned herself for a sexist judgement: Deast might be a good cook himself. But hot and cross, he was on the attack.

  Charmian rallied to the defence of Birdie and Winifred. ‘It’s mainly a crime bookshop, and the women are white witches. They are not into black magic.’

  Hallows, dressed in dark blue with a white shirt, slid in as she was speaking, nodded to everyone politely, apologized for being late and sat down, looking exhausted. He was not enjoying life at the moment. And Charmian noted that other than taking the seat at the head of the table, he was making no attempt to chair this informal committee.

  He pushed a note across the table to Charmian: Remember the Horseman? He is missing. He has not reported to his local station or to his probation officer. Big query here.

  Charmian read the note and absorbed the implications while listening to Inspector Deast. She gave Hallows a small nod to acknowledge what he had written.

  Deast appeared unconvinced by what Charmian had said about Birdie and Winifred: magic was magic and witches were witches was written all over his face.

  ‘Black witches, white witches, what’s the difference?’

  Sid Chance for once rallied to Charmian’s defence. ‘Didn’t your grandmother ever mutter a few words over a wart on your hand and it went away? That’s white witchery.’

  Deast looked at his hand, battered and scarred, which looked as if generations of warts had nested there and been removed.

  ‘What about the porn stuff? Anything to do with them?’

  ‘The pile of magazines and books are old and dusty, look as if they haven’t been touched for years. But they are being examined.’ This was from Hallows. ‘Nothing really hard core there.’

  Deast accepted this with a nod, but did not give up. ‘How did they know where to look?’

  Good question again. He was needle sharp when on form, Charmian decided. Oddly, it made her like him more. ‘A man called Charley Briggs, you may know him and his restaurant. Old friend of the women, they went there to eat after a bad day. He joked to them about what was under the floor.’ She nodded to the pile of papers in front of each one. ‘ He has been questioned, and made a statement agreeing he did say all this to the two women. He says it was a joke. It’s all there for you to read.’

  De
ast kept on: ‘The shop ought to be closed down.’

  ‘It is closed,’ said Charmian. And a forensic team is in there now. And in defence of Miss Peacock and Miss Eagle, may I say that Miss Peacock’s statement of being approached by a woman in a car is significant and helpful.’ She smiled at Chance. ‘Thank you, Sid, for loaning us a few men … as you can guess, Forensics here are overloaded. They will work in close contact with each other and you.’

  ‘I hope I am included,’ said Deast.

  ‘Of course, this is teamwork.’

  Chance reported that Amanda Warren’s mother had told him that the clothes found on her daughter’s body were not her own. She could not identify them as anything her daughter had owned or would have bought.

  ‘Amanda had good taste and was not short of a bob, she would never have worn that terrible, cheap cotton skirt, besides which it’s a size 12 and she was a 10 …’

  Thus she had spoken.

  But the pathologist, Fred Place, had reported that no, an eye had not been cut from Amanda’s face. Had they read his report with the care with which he wrote it, then they would have grasped that if it had been so, he would have mentioned it.

  ‘Tetchy bugger,’ said Deast irritably.

  Charmian summed up: ‘Her clothes were changed, but her eyes are intact. The eye placed, for whatever reason, on the clothes below the floorboards must belong to another victim. The pathologist whom I consulted this morning said the eyeball has not been there very long, so we have to look for another and recent victim.’

  She looked down at the list on the table in front of her:

  Amanda Warren, Fletely, found. We know about her.

  Lily Green, Bredon, not found.

  Daisy Winner, Bredon, not found.

  Mary Jersey, Windsor, not found.

  Louise Sherry, Old Windsor, not found.

  ‘One of these, I guess.’

  ‘Or someone we don’t know about yet.’ Sid Chance sounded gloomy.